A Modern Partnership

January 15, 2016 Art | College of Arts and Humanities

UMD and The Phillips Collection join forces to increase collaboration in the arts and humanities.

By Lauren Brown, Terp Magazine

Photo Courtesy of The Phillips Collection

A new partnership between the University of Maryland and the nation’s first museum of modern art seeks to significantly expand artistic innovation and scholarship at both institutions.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and UMD will together develop new courses and programming, create research and internship opportunities, co-host events and expand access to one of the world’s most distinguished collections of impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

“This remarkable partnership fulfills a longtime dream for this campus,” UMD President Wallace Loh says. “Not only does it provide access to this priceless collection, but it brings a new vigor to our arts education, and to the entire campus. We are genuinely a STEAM university—science, technology, engineering, arts, math.”

Dorothy Kosinski, director of the Phillips Collection, says the partnership enhances the original vision of founder Duncan Phillips, who imagined an “intimate museum combined with an experiment station.”

“As we look toward the museum’s 100th anniversary in 2021, we intend to redefine its role within the cultural community locally and globally,” she says. “Together with the University of Maryland, we can reach new audiences, disrupt conventional thinking and inspire new heights of achievement and impact.”

The 4,000-piece collection specializes in American and European masters including Renoir, Rothko, O’Keeffe, van Gogh and Gauguin, but much of it remains in storage. A highlight of the partnership—a gallery and education and storage facility to be built in Prince George’s County—will make it available to a broader audience and encourage experimentation in the arts.

Meanwhile, UMD expands its presence in the nation’s capital and has a new place and platform for conversations and collaborations in the arts and humanities.

“This is something we’re certainly already doing on campus, but now it will be on a larger scale and will attract more people with an interest in learning about and nurturing and supporting these collaborations—it gives them another way in which to engage,” says Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.